That’s a wrap! On January 18, 2019, we held our second annual UiPath Developer Conference in Bengaluru, India. With 21 speakers, 29 different sessions, over 700 attendees, and 160 live streaming events, this conference is the biggest Robotic Process Automation (RPA) event for the developer community in India.

More than 80% of the UiPath Developer Conference attendees were RPA developers who are currently using the UiPath Enterprise RPA Platform. They liked getting a sneak peek at upcoming innovations as well as actionable best practices they could use to improve their automation development efforts.

As one developer put it, “The UiPath RPA Developer Conference was a great experience. I got a firsthand look at many upcoming features and learned many tips I can start using as soon as I get back. I love the UiPath tool.”

One attendee even went so far as to call the conference a “life-changing moment.”

India as a global RPA leader

India is quickly establishing itself as the global hub of RPA and the conference looks to recognize that and continue to help advance the country’s RPA ecosystem. According to Bobby Patrick, CMO at UiPath, 75,000 people have UiPath certifications in India. That’s 3 times more than any other country in the world!

UiPath expects to train 500,000 students across more than 1,000 colleges and universities by 2022.

Early presentations helped set the stage by putting RPA in context and showing just how 'big' this technology really is. Raghu Subramanian, President and CEO of UiPath India, set the stage with his welcoming remarks:

"The fourth industrial revolution -- the Automation First Era -- is evolving exponentially. Moreover, it is disrupting almost every industry in every country. And the breadth and depth of these changes herald the transformation of entire systems of production, management, and governance. Today, we will discuss more on how India can leverage this disruption and take lead for the world."

RPA is clearly at the forefront of technology in India and is in the top 10 technologies currently shaping the Indian IT industry.

The future of RPA and other conference highlights

Other presentations supported UiPath’s Automation First vision, which is itself a three-pronged approach where we strive for a Robot for every person, continued open and free collaboration to make UiPath technology even better, and a commitment to Robots that learn skills.

Patrick discussed how RPA is leading the GigaBot Economy, which is human workers and the digital workforce (software robots) working together, alongside each other, and across borders for even greater business transformation.

He also predicted more enterprise companies will create Robotics Operation Centers (ROCs), similar to the security operations and network operations centers already commonly present in enterprise organizations.

Additional conference sessions offered a closer look at the UiPath product roadmap, and specifically, how customer- and developer-driven enhancements continue to become part of the UiPath Enterprise RPA platform.

This year’s conference also tried something new: the first-ever UiPath Academy Live Advanced session. Attendees flocked to this event—much more than the beginners’ session—clear evidence that developers are passionate about expanding their RPA knowledge and learning valuable new skills.

Daniel Dines’ big announcement

For many, the most notable highlight came as part of UiPath CEO Daniel Dines’ keynote speech. In it, he described RPA developers’ single-most challenging task—attempting to automate tasks in a Citrix environment or a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) where they don’t have access to the underlying applications.

Past automation attempts used OCR and image matching, but these approaches led to larger scalability and maintenance issues. UiPath recognized the challenge and then spent 18 months developing a computer vision capability that extracts critical inputs and successfully automates workflows in Citrix or other VDI environments.

Dines’ speech also included a live demo of this new computer vision capability, which you can see for yourself here.

While the 2019 UiPath Developer Conference just finished, it’s never too early to start planning to make next year’s event even better. If you attended, and have suggestions to improve the 2020 conference, please let us know.

See more highlights from all the event sessions, including the slide decks, in the event pack